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Replies to: 80% Graduation Rate.

Maybe it's just me, but that does sound pretty low, all things considered; although I guess that that might be because it's quite a "different" university - not necessarily bad, just different, and a lot of people aren't aware of that difference when they choose to attend, and they end up dropping up because they didn't know what they were signing up for.

It's actually quite low for a top tier school. Most of them are at least 90% if not 95% and higher. I think I remember scanning down a set of rankings once, and the first school to be around 80% other than Caltech was some random state school.

Data for the class entering Caltech in Fall 2001:
- Total number of students entering the university: 214
- Total number of students graduating in four years or less (before August 2005): 175 (81.8%)
- Total number of students graduating in five years or less (before August 2006): 189 (88.3%)
- Total number of students graduating in six years or less (before August 2007): 191 (89.3%)

...but I'm too lazy to look up the numbers for other universities, so I'm still not exactly sure how this compares. =P

Bear in mind that not all majors are of equal difficulty. It's possible that these graduation rates are deflated by majors which either have a large number of requirements, or else include some courses which are very difficult or something like that. Just guesses, though, I don't have any numbers to back that up--it sounds reasonable, though. As for whether good GPAs are hard to come by, I don't really know--I'm just a frosh, so I haven't had anything on real grades yet.

LOL, it's so amusing when the 80% figure comes up. Hell, I remember thinking it looking pretty daunting. But if you talk to the alums from two decades ago, they will mention that ~1/3 of the people would fail out of Tech (or transfer, presumably)!

Funny story, you don't even have to go back that far to see some of the really scary stuff.

Data for the class entering Caltech in Fall 1996:
- Total number of students entering the university: 216
- Total number of students graduating in four years or less (before August 2000): 156 (72.2%)
- Total number of students graduating in five years or less (before August 2001): 177 (81.9%)
- Total number of students graduating in six years or less (before August 2002): 183 (84.7%)

But this isn't really cause for concern, I think, because it's getting better. Clearly, if we assume that the rate of change of the four-year-graduation rate is constant, then the current prefroshies here should enjoy a four-year graduation rate of 97.1%. And by the entering class of 2011, more than 100% of entering freshmen will graduate on time! Yay!